j.1467-9‘crossing’ in singapore71x.2011.01700.x

8/9/2019 j.1467-9Crossing in Singapore71X.2011.01700.x

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World Englishes, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 317331, 2011. 0883-2919

Crossing in Singapore

VINITI VAISH and MARDIANA ROSLAN

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the way a group of pre-teens in Singapore use Malay, Chinese andEnglish to perform identity. It is based on one case study of a Malay girl, Syafiqah, from a larger projectcalled The Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore 2006, and does not claim to be generalizable. The data aretranscripts of recordings made on the speech patterns of Syafiqah in the domain of family and friends.Though Malay and Mandarin are out-group languages in the language ideology of Singapore, we find thatamong this group of friends, the Malay and Chinese pre-teens cross over into these languages to createsolidarity between different ethnicities. They use Malay and Mandarin to perform and display identity.Patterns of exclusion in this group are based on personality and not ethnicity. Though a language of

solidarity in Singapores language ideology, these pre-teens perceive Standard English as an exclusionarylanguage of status and accept Singlish as the language of solidarity.

INTRODUCTION

The government of Singapore actively implements language ideology through nationalevents like the annual Speak Mandarin Campaign and Speak Good English Movement.Mandarin drive starts in the home: MM Lee urges Chinese parents to speak to children inMandarin, reads the headline in Singapores national newspaper, The Straits Times (March18, 2009: 1). The article reports on Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yews comments at the 30th

anniversary launch of the Speak Mandarin Campaign. Both English and Mandarin, twoof Singapores four official languages (the other two are Tamil and Malay), are perceivedas languages with tremendous linguistic capital, while Mandarin is also credited withsymbolic and cultural capital for the Chinese community in Singapore. As in the caseof Mandarin, in the imagination of Singapore, Malay and Tamil are languages whichcarry the culture of the respective communities. Though there are no language campaignsor movements in Tamil and Malay, these two minority languages are also developed bythe state through allocation of funds and through inclusion in the bilingual language ineducation policy. As compared to the mother tongues, English is perceived not only aslinguistic capital which should be equitably distributed to all children through the national

school system, but also as the language of solidarity among the three main ethnicities: theChinese, Malay and Indians.

According to the latest census of Singapore, Tables 1a and 1b show a demographicsnapshot of the country regarding ethnicity and language. Table 1a shows the main ethnicgroups of Singapore. In the year 2000 the ethnic breakup was as follows: Chinese (76.8%),Malay (13.9%) and Indians (7.9%). According to Table 1b, English is gaining groundas the language most frequently spoken at home for all the three main ethnic groups in

English Language and Literature, Nanyang Technological university, National Institute of Education, 1 NanyangWalk, Singapore 637616. E-mail: [email protected]

Centre for Research in Pedagogy & Practice, National Institute of Education, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616.E-mail: [email protected]

C 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd


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318 Viniti Vaish and Mardiana Roslan

Table 1a. Key indicators of the resident population ethnicity

Total Chinese Malay Indian Others

1990 2000 1990 2000 1990 2000 1990 2000 1990 2000

Demographics characteristics

Singapore residents (000) 2735.9 3263.2 2127.9 2505.4 384.3 453.6 194.0 257.8 29.6 46.4

Ethnic composition (%) 100.0 100.0 77.8 76.8 14.0 13.9 7.1 7.9 1.1 1.4

Table 1b. Key indicators of the resident population language

Total Chinese Malay Indian Others

1990 2000 1990 2000 1990 2000 1990 2000 1990 2000

Language most frequently

spoken at home (aged

5 years and above)

English 18.8 23.0 19.3 23.9 6.1 7.9 32.3 35.6 67.2 68.5

Mandarin 23.7 35.0 30.1 45.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 2.8 4.4

Chinese dialects 39.6 23.8 50.3 30.7 0.1 0.2 0.1 3.3 3.2

Malay 14.

3 14.

1 0.

3 0.

2 93.

7 91.

6 14.

5 11.

6 19.

3 15.

6

Tamil 2.9 3.2 0.1 43.2 42.9 0.1 0.2

Others 0.8 0.9 0.1 0.3 9.8 9.7 7.3 8.2

Source: Singapore Census of Population (2000).

Singapore though the rate of increase is faster for the Chinese. It is important to note that theterm English in the census does not distinguish between Standard English and Singlish,the colloquial variety of English spoken in Singapore, on which there is considerableliterature (Wee 2005; 2010; Rubdy 2007). Due to the way the bilingual language in edu-cation policy works in Singapore, English is the only common language between children

of different ethnicities in school. Each school-going child undergoes English-mediumeducation and takes one mother tongue as a second language, usually based on his/herfathers ethnic group. Thus, although children code-switch with dexterity, their mothertongue is actually an in-group language which they usually use with friends of the sameethnicity.

This paper explores the sociolinguistic phenomenon of crossing (Rampton 1995;1998; 1999; 2005), against the backdrop of a multiethnic, multilingual Singapore. Wefirst describe what the characteristics of crossing are and briefly distinguish between code-switching and crossing. We then introduce our case, which is a friendship network of Malayand Chinese pre-teens in Singapore, and show instances of crossing in their interactions

with each other. On the basis of this data we make inferences on negotiations of groupmembership and display of identity, though these inferences are specific to this case andcannot be extrapolated to all Chinese and Malay pre-teens in Singapore.

CROSSING

The central concept in this paper is crossing between out-group languages as dis-tinguished from code-switching between in-group languages. According to Rampton(2005: 28) crossing is the use of language varieties associated with social or ethnic groupsthat the speaker doesnt normally belong to. Ramptons data set is based on languageuse among three ethnic groups of British-born adolescents: White, African Caribbean andIndian/Pakistani. He uses nose to data interactional analysis to show how these youth



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Crossing in Singapore 319

use Punjabi, English and Creole in acts of performativity, to display exclusionary power orestablish solidarity. Ramptons is an extremely large speech corpus; thus, despite the factthat his is a qualitative study, he draws credible generalizations about the cultural politicsof ethnic relations between the various ethnicities in multicultural Britain.

Rampton (1999) has also used crossing to analyze the use of German, outside the

classroom, in an inner-city London school by adolescents who are learning it as a foreignlanguage. This is an interesting twist to the concept of crossing because in the use ofGerman there is no community of native German speakers towards whom crossing istaking place. Rampton shows that the use of German is an act of ritual performativityon the part of the speaker and is comparable to the use of drama and music. There isself-dramatization in the way speakers use German. Since German was used in casualconversation overwhelmingly by boys rather than girls, Rampton also hypothesizes aboutthe masculinity of German language use. Performance, which is an important componentof crossing, will be taken up in our discussion of the interaction in Extract 5 (see Datasection), in which the Chinese girls sing a Malay song.

An important concept in Ramptons work is his problemetization of the basic unit ofanalysis in sociolinguistics: the speech community. Rampton shows that adolescents arenot restricted to their own speech community and creatively move in and out of variousspeech communities. In fact, in the case where the students use German, they are crossinginto a non-existent speech community because German is taught as a foreign language inthis school and there is no community towards whom the crossing can take place. He thusextends the definition of speech community from bilingual in-groups, which is what code-switching literature tends to focus on, to loosely connected out-groups. Whereas there isone common language between these out-groups, for example, English, there may be otherlanguages being used which are not part of the speakers sociolinguistic competence.

An equally important concept is the juxtaposition between crossing and code-switching(Rampton, 1998). The latter is always between in-group languages, namely, languages forwhich there are well established speech communities to which the interlocutors belong.However crossing takes place between discrete speech communities such that a new lin-guistic space is created where identities can be re-negotiated. Whereas in crossing, thespeakers are only aware of the superficial features of the language into which they arecrossing, code-switchers tend to be bilingual. On the surface, transcripts showing crossingand/or code-switching can look quite similar. In fact transcripts showing crossing can lookvery much like borrowing in code-switching and there is clearly some overlap in these twosociolinguistic phenomena. However, crossers are trying to appropriate a cultural spacewhereas bilinguals already belong to multiple cultural spaces and do not have to workhard at this appropriation. Finally, the idea of performance is not as applicable to code-switching as it is to crossing. In crossing the speakers are staging an identity that requiresthem to pretend as if they are acting in a play. Code-switchers live multiple identitiesin their homes, schools, and other domains so the act of dramatization is not part of abilinguals sociolinguistic behavior.

Within the idea of performance is a type of interaction where adolescents mimic theaccent of the community into which they are crossing. Specifically in Ramptons data setthere are 160 exchanges involving stylized Asian English and more than 250 exchangeswhere a Creole influence was detectable. In the transcripts of these exchanges, Ramptonprovides a phonetic transcription to evoke the exact accent that the adolescents are using.This type of exchange is completely absent in code-switching literature which usually



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focuses on lexicon and syntax and not on pronunciation. Whether crossing is lexical oronly at the level of accent, there is an element of performance art or gaming in this type ofinteraction along with ethnic recategorization (Rampton 1998).

The concept of crossing has caught the imagination of sociolinguists and scholars haveexplored it in other settings (Hill 1999; Lo 1999; Cutler 2003; Pennycook 2003). We begin

with Hills (1999) study as this is an overview of crossing. In an overview of styling andcrossing, terms which she uses interchangeably, Hill (1999) remarks that this topic is notnew though it was definitely Rampton who gave it the systematicity of analysis that suchan important concept deserves. The lack of novelty regarding crossing is also documentedby Bell (1999). He writes that the performance of a language variety which is not onesown has been explored by numerous sociolinguists though it has been called other namesand not crossing. In Bells own work it is called referee versus audience design in whichthere are two dimensions of language style: responsive and initiative. Initiative comesclose to Ramptons (1999) concept of crossing because in this style the speaker takes theinitiative of creatively coming up with utterances in the language of his/her audience.

Hills (1999) work is in crossing over to mock- Spanish, that is, use of Spanish wordsand phrases that genuine Spanish speakers do not really use in the way that non-Spanishcrossers use them. Hill comments that though Ramptons overall emphasis is on theliberatory potential of crossing, she is less optimistic about it. She finds that powerplay between crossers and those towards whom the crossing is taking place to be farmore complex and that crossers can use their words not to bridge racial boundaries but todeliberately exacerbate them.

The rejection of a crosser is also explored by Cutler (2003), who presents data froma longitudinal case study of one adolescent, Mike, an European American who crossesto AAVE (African American Vernacular English). In keeping with Ramptons definition

of crossing, Cutler points out that Mike only knows the superficial features of AAVElike pronunciation and does not quite understand the grammar. Cutlers analysis of Mikeslanguage use shows that Mikes appropriation of African American cultural forms, likelanguage, dress, music, etc., represent a desire to bridge racial boundaries between AfricanAmericans and European Americans. At the same time Cutler also shows how Mikeresents being labeled a white boy by his African American peers and is hurt by therejection he often faces from the very group he desires to join. This case is thus one oftense negotiation between self and other (Cutler 2003: 325), in which there is no smoothsolidarity and friendship between African American and European American adolescents.In fact despite his use of crossing Mike does not seem to be able to build solidarity withhis African American peers and remains an outsider.

Los (1999) paper shows a complex relationship between interlocutors in which Chazz,a Chinese American, who knows Korean, code-switches between English and Korean withhis Korean American friend, Ken. However, Ken does not think that Chazz speaks Koreanvery well and does not totally accept Chazzs crossing over into Korean culture and identity.Thus, though Chazz thinks he is code-switching with finesse, Ken thinks he is crossing,which is unacceptable to the latter. Los study is as far as we know the only one to datein which code-switching and crossing are juxtaposed. In interviews with the author Kenreveals that Chazz always overdoes the cultural bit with Ken. For instance, he bows too lowwhen a small nod will do. Ironically Chazzs crossing to AAVE with their African Americanfriend Rob, is acceptable to Rob. The study thus highlights power-play of inclusion andexclusion among interlocutors who are either code-switching and/or crossing.



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Both Pennycook (2003) and Wee (2005) emphasize that theoretical foci in sociolinguis-tics tend to valorize standard languages and ignore other Englishes. Pennycook (2003)breaks new ground in research on crossing by pointing out that most of the research on thistopic has been done within closely ethnographised communities. What has not been dealtwith is the mixing that comes about as a result of transcultural global flows. Pennycooks

main argument is a review of globalization and the world Englishes paradigm to showthat the shortcoming of these theoretical foci is that they ignore the salience of otherEnglishes. Analyzing the lyrics of Japanese hip-hop artists, Rip Slyme, the author com-ments on what kind of Japaneseness is being displayed through the performance of theirsongs. When the singers of Rip Slyme cross to English from Japanese, the language isbeing used not so much for communication but for looking at Japaneseness from outside.A similar argument is made by Wee (2005) who documents that the shortcoming of theLinguistic Human Rights (LHR) paradigm is that it ignores intra-linguistic discrimina-tion. As an illustration of intra-linguistic discrimination Wee discusses attitudes amongSingaporeans towards Singlish, the colloquial variety of English spoken in Singapore.

A key term used by Pennycook is performativity which can be understood as the way inwhich we perform acts of identity as an ongoing series of social and cultural performancesrather than as the expression of a prior identity (Pennycook, 2003: 528). Performativitythus challenges a priori identities. It is not that people use language varieties becauseof who they are, but rather that we perform who we are by (among other things) usingvarieties of language (Pennycook, 2003: 528). This idea of performativity is crucial in ourdiscussion of the way that the participants in this study engage in ritualistic language playto co-construct who they think they are.

THE SINGAPORE CONTEXT

Though there has been some work on bilingualism and identity in Singapore, it is notbased on naturally occurring speech elicited systematically through ethnographic methods.For instance Saravanan (1993) comments on the low status of Tamil and negative attitudestowards this language based on census data. Similarly, Kwan-Terry (2000) uses census datato comment that except for the Peranakans who syncretised Chinese and Malay cultures,there exist linguistic islands within the island of Singapore. Using government policy-speak as data to semiotically analyze Singapores language ideology, Wee (2006) findsthat the Singapore government uses iconization, recursiveness and erasure to ensure thatlanguage and culture do not disturb the thriving economy of the nation. Based on a survey

of 88 undergraduate students at the National University of Singapore, Kamwangamalu(1992: 38) concludes that these students have stronger feelings or attachment for Englishthan for their mother tongue. From comments to open ended questions written in thequestionnaire Kamwangamalu infers: what we see here is a shift of loyalty from thevernacular to English.

Singapore became a separate state on August 9, 1965; however, it was not at this timea nation in the sense of sharing cultural symbols that bind disparate communities intoone entity. Consequently the Peoples Action Party went about constructing institutionswhich foster this feeling of nationhood. Velayutham (2007) discusses five such initiatives:promotion of economic development; multiracialism; bilingualism; public housing andnational service. Of these the promotion of multiculturalism and bilingualism are directlyrelevant to this paper. One of the reviewers has rightly pointed out that in Singapores



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Table 2. Qualitative follow-up studies in SSS 2006

Ethnicity/ Total number

Income Chinese Malay Indian of children

High Chris(M) Syafiqah(F) Rani(F) 3

Upper Middle Nina(F) Khairi(M) Saira Banu(F) 3Middle Xiao Shen(M) Ashik(M) Shahrukh(M) 3

Low Andrew(M) Adibah(F) Abhishek(M) 3

Total hours of recording

for each ethnic group

25 hours 21 hours and

40 minutes

23 hours and

22 minutes

12

M: male, F: female

national school system, multiracialism is celebrated through the Racial Harmony Day andthrough a subject like National Education. Velayutham critiques the governments effortsby pointing out that these initiatives essentialize ethnic groups and discourage spaces of

hybridity. For instance, Singlish is actively discouraged in the media because it is perceivedto be detrimental to the economic development of Singapore. We will take up attitudestowards such hybrid cultural spaces in the discussion section of this paper.

METHODOLOGY

This paper is based on a project called The Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore, 2006(SSS 2006), undertaken by The Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice in Singapore.The research question for SSS 2006 is: Who speaks what language to whom in whatcontext with what attitude with what level of fluency and to what end? Though the

project has a quantitative and a qualitative phase, only the latter is described herein as thispaper analyzes only qualitative results. The quantitative survey is described and its resultsanalyzed in detail in Vaish (2007a; 2007b) and Vaish and Tan (2008).

Table 2 shows the specifics of the follow up studies in the qualitative phase of SSS2006. The last column on the right shows that there are three children in one incomegroup across all three main ethnic groups, giving us a total of 12 subjects. Each of these12 children was observed for about a total of two weeks in the five domains of the survey:school; religion; public space; media; and family/friends. In each of these five domainswe audio-recorded at least one hour of talk. The visits with the children took the form ofa semi-structured interview to start with, leading to observations at the site, for instance

playground or mosque, etc.The bilingual researcher audio-recorded all the visits, videotaped whatever she couldand wrote daily field notes. In a few domains for specific children videotaping was notallowed and for these we only have audio-recordings. She also filled out an observationguide that documents those details of the childs environment that could not be capturedon audio or video tape. The children were requested to keep a journal-cum-log in whichthey recorded their activities with a focus on language and literacy. The project emphasizedthe child as participant in and leader of data collection. Thus, one audio-recorder was leftwith the children and they were asked to record what they thought is typical languageuse in their lifeworlds. Consequently, each one of the 12 cases in Table 2 consisted ofthe survey instrument, the observation guide of the researcher, her field notes, transcriptsand translations of all the audio and video recordings in the follow up studies, photos, the



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language journal-cum-log submitted by the child, e-mails exchanged between researcherand child and finally any other appropriate artifacts.

In deciding exactly what type of interaction constitutes crossing we follow Rampton(1995, 1998, 1999, 2005). For Rampton a single word that one person says in a languagethat he/she does not know is one instance of crossing. For instance in Rampton (1995), Ian,

an Anglo male says lulla which in Punjabi means willy. This word and the context withinwhich it is said constitute one instance of crossing (Rampton 1995: 493). Also, accentsconstitute instances of crossing and relate to the idea of performance being an integralpart of such an exchange. Thus in the same paper when Mohan, a 15 year old Indian male,says, Eh, this is not middle school no more in stylized Asian English, Rampton (1995,p. 494) marks it as crossing. On this basis we identify 13 exchanges in our data in visit 3in which there is evidence of crossing. From a total of 13, three exchanges are shown inExtracts 2, 3 and 5. In some exchanges crossing occurs more than once. For instance, inExtract 2 there are three occurrences of crossing in lines 3, 5 and 14. Similarly in Extract5 there are 5 occurrences of crossing in lines 1, 6, 7, 8 and 9 (see Data section).

PARTICIPANTS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This paper is based on the case of Syafiqah (all names are pseudonyms), a 10-year-oldMalay girl from an upper middle class family. The second author had the opportunityof visiting Syafiqah five times during the course of two weeks during which she wasaudio-recorded and videotaped with her family, her Malay friends, her Malay and Chinesefriends and while shopping with the researcher. Due to the nature of our topic the extractsin the Data section are from the third of these five visits in which the second author metSyafiqah with her group of Chinese and Malay friends after school as they all hung out

on the void deck1

of one of the girls apartment building. In this group there are six girlsall aged 1011: Syafiqah, Nur, Shikin and Nurul are Malay while Jenny and Clara areChinese. The six participants are in the same co-educational school and all of them, exceptShikin, are prefects. Data for this case were collected by the second author who is of Malayethnicity and bilingual in Malay and English.

In order to analyze the power play between the participants and their display of identityit is important to describe the cliques to which they belong or aspire to belong. Allthe participants mentioned above except for Syafiqah and Shikin are in a clique calledGEMS and see themselves as outspoken, bold and brash young women. Thus GEMS isan interracial multilingual clique with two Malay and two Chinese members. These girls

are quick to point out to the second author that they are not shy, retiring and soft-spokentype of girls. Each member of GEMS has her own trade mark gem stone; for instance,Nurul is blue sapphire, Jenny is diamond, Nur is baby bloodstone and Clara is amazingamethyst. Syafiqah used to have her own clique called Naughty Pranksters of which shewas the leader; however Naughty Pranksters no longer exists. After Naughty Pranksters,Syafiqah became a member of Minahs, a group named after the bird, which she leftbecause the girls in the Minah clique were conformist and boring. The boys in their schoolalso have cliques, the most talked about one being Mat Reps.

We explore the following specific questions: What is the nature of crossing displayedby these children and what implications does this have for power play and identity? Whatis the meaning of ethnicity for these pre-teens and is it a factor in group membership? Howdo performance and ritual contribute to the way that the children do identity?



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DATA

Setting: All the extracts are from the third visit to Syafiqahs home. In this visit thesecond author arrived in the evening when Syafiqah was with her Malay friends: Nur,Nurul and Shikin. Soon after the researcher arrived they were joined by the two Chinesegirls Jenny and Clara. Thereafter they all proceeded to the void deck in the apartment ofNurul.

Extract 1

1. Syafiqah: Jenny, Jenny, the pretty one. The Chinese one lar. The Chinese white, very white one.

2. Researcher: Most of them are white

3. Syafiqah: The one with. . .the one with plaster on the leg. (laughs).

4. Researcher: Ah! I cant notice everything.

5. Syafiqah: The shoe is so small.

Extract 2

1. Nur: Eh, you stead with Fazli before?2. Nurul: Really?

3. Syafiqah: Mmm yea. . .you all dont know? For long, long time so long until he give me a lot of

flowers. . .chey

4. Nurul:chey(Chinese for duh)

5. Clara:chey Alamak, alamak! (Malay for oh my gosh)

6. Nurul: How long?

7. Syafiqah: Huh?

8. Nur: How long?

9. Syafiqah: 6 months.

10. All: Wah!

11. Syafiqah: And then and then this year also I get stead you know last year I also I get stead with himagain. Primary 4 I got stead with him. Primary 5 I got stead with him. Primary . . .

12. Jenny: I think. . .

13. Nurul: What do you mean?

14. Nur: Primary 4 she is guai-guai(Mandarin for goody goody), then after primary 5 that now hes so

like. . .

15. Clara: You?Guai? (laughs)

Extract 3:

1. All: GEMS (they laugh)

2. Syafiqah: Jinx! Im supposed to say jinx.

3. Nur: We GEMS. . .

4. Syafiqah: OK. Ill be jinx.5. Researcher: Are you extending your membership?

6. Syafiqah: No.

7. All: laugh

8. Researcher: But you can do it what in the life span of one year.

9. Syafiqah: I dont ask them to . . .We friends good enough what?

10. Shikin: Sorry Syafiqah.

11. Nurul: You are our very, very good friend.

12. Syafiqah: Im not. . .kepoand stuff. (Chinese for busybody)

Extract 4:

1. Researcher: But do you think you guys are very good in English?

2. Jenny: Clara. Whoa!



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3. Nurul: Ya Clara!

4. Jenny: Ya like Clara. Clara seldom speaks Singlish yup.

5. Shikin: Ya, shes always speaking good vocab words.

6. Clara: Ya lar not my fault OK!

7. Researcher: So whose fault is it?

8. Shikin: Clara. Her fault.

9. Clara: My parents fault.

10. Researcher: OK

11. Nurul: Uumm. Her parents force her to speak English I think only.

12. Researcher: Really?

13. Clara: No lah. . .I was just kidding. I speak Singlish, my mum will scold.

Extract 5

1. All: (sing) Di bawah pokok kelapa.

Farhan bukak baju.

Nur malu-malu.

Farhan pun kata: I love you.

(Under the coconut tree, Farhan takes off clothes. Nur gets shy. Farhan then said: I love you.)2. Nur: xxx

3. Syafiqah: Why you want to marry him?

4. Nur: Why dont you guys sing it to Jenny?

5. Syafiqah: OK (sings and laughs)Kalili bukak baju. (Kalili takes off his clothes.)

6. All: Together-gether.Di bawah pokok kelapa. Kallili bukak baju. Jenny malu-malu. Kallili pun kata:

I love you.

7. Nur:Wo ai ni (Mandarin for I love you)

8. Syafiqah:Wo ai ni

9. Nurul:Wo ai ni.

DISCUSSION

Power play

Complex layers of power play are discernable in the relationship between the Malayand Chinese girls in this group. Though the six are good friends and, as this paper willgo on to show, there are numerous instances of crossing between the Malay and Chinese,they are also aware of their inherent differences in ethnicity. In Extract 1 Syafiqah saysabout Jenny to the second author: Jenny, Jenny, the pretty one. The Chinese one lar. The

Chinese white, very white one. In line 5 she says that the shoe is so small. At thetime that Syafiqah makes this comment the Malay girls and the researcher are walkingtowards the Chinese girls and Jenny and Clara cannot hear Syafiqahs comment. HereSyafiqah is emphasizing Jennys whiteness and the fact that this is considered beautiful insociety. She is indirectly pointing to her own darker skin thus highlighting the difference inethnicity between the Malay and the Chinese. She also notices Jennys small feet which isa stereotypical impression that people have of Chinese women. Through comments aboutwhiteness and small feet Syafiqah is drawing the boundary between the ethnicities whichwill later be crossed by the interlocutors in this group.

Along with crossing there also instances of code-switching between English and Malay,despite the fact that there are non-Malay speaking people in this group. An illustration isthe following exchange which is also taken from visit 3:



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Syafiqah: Where are we going? Your block?

Nurul; Eh kita pergi sana je nak? Tak Susah? (Eh, well just go there OK? Not troublesome.)

Syafiqah:Nak pergi block dia?(Want to go to her block?)

Nurul: her block?

In the exchange above the girls are deciding where they are going to settle down fora chat. Though the Chinese girls, Jenny and Clara, are very much part of the group atthis juncture, Syafiqah and Nurul code-switch to Malay for a few utterances showing theexclusionary power of language. In all instances of code-switching in visit 3 it is the Malaygirls switching to Malay from English. Jenny and Clara never code-switch to Mandarinwhen they talk to each other. This pattern indicates that sometimes Malay is used as anin-group language from which the Chinese girls are excluded. Also the four Malay girls,because they are in the majority, seem to wield more power than the two Chinese girls.

In Extract 3, there is a tussle about asking for group membership and being acceptedor rejected. In line 1, when all the girls say GEMS Syafiqah says that she is supposed

to say jinx because she is not part of this clique and it would be a lie if she were to callout GEMS together with the others. Articulation of the word jinx would cancel out thelie. The researcher and second author of this paper then ask in line 5 if membership willbe extended to Syafiqah and Shikin. Though Syafiqah is the person whose membership isbeing discussed she replies with a no to the researchers question which makes everyonelaugh. In line 9, Syafiqah goes on to say: I dont ask them to . . .we friends good enoughwhat. She puts herself out of the situation of being rejected by establishing that she is notasking for membership. In line 11, Nurul says you are our very very good friend, meaningthat we draw a boundary at friendship. Shikin, who is also not part of GEMS, says sorrySyafiqah, in line 10, indicating that Syafiqah might be in a situation where she is facingrejection. Shikin is thus expressing pity for Syafiqah which does not go down well withSyafiqah as she is used to maintaining a leadership role. Syafiqah coolly retorts in line 12:Im not kepo and stuff. The word kepo is from Chinese and means a busybody. Syafiqahkeeps her dignity without a sense of rejection because she has already established that sheis not asking for membership and now she says that she does not want to poke her nose inanyone elses business. At the same time she crosses by using a Chinese word to display amulticultural identity which is in keeping with the multicultural membership of GEMS.

The power play in Extract 3 is about Syafiqah keeping face, which is very important inAsian culture. In all the three main ethnic groups in Singapore, Indian, Malay and Chinese,there exists the concept of saving face which means dealing with a situation in a waythat shows that an individual is in control and puts his/her best foot forward. Thus, despitebeing attracted to the GEMS clique, Syafiqah does not ask for group membership andwhen the researcher raises this issue she appears to be rejecting GEMS whereas, in fact,GEMS are rejecting her.

Crossing

Malay and Mandarin, which are out-group languages for the Malay and Chinese girlsrespectively, are the languages used for crossing. This means that though the Chinese girlsmight know a few words and phrases of Malay and vice versa, they are not speakers ofMalay. The same is true of the Malay girls and Mandarin. The in-group languages areSinglish and Standard English. The former is the main language of communication among



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the participants in this study. In most cases, crossing takes place between Singlish andMalay or Singlish and Mandarin.

Standard English, though an in-group language because it is the medium of instructionfor all schoolchildren in Singapore, is not considered to be an in-group language in theideology of the girls. In Extract 4, the researcher prompts a conversation about the English

language use of the girls. In lines 3, 4 and 5 Nur, Shinkin and Jenny remark that in theirgroup of friends, Clara speaks the best English. The implication of this is that Clara usuallyspeaks Standard English and not Singlish. From lines 6 to 13 there is a tussle about whoto blame for the good English that Clara speaks. In line 6, Clara defends herself as if thiswas some sort of an attack on her personality, saying that speaking standard English is nother fault. Claras response clearly marks a boundary between in-group Singlish, which isthe dialect of friendship and solidarity between friends, and Standard English which is notused for this purpose. Clara is thus trying to establish that though she may speak StandardEnglish she is still one of them.

Shikin does not let Clara off so easily for speaking standard English and in line 8, says

that it is indeed Claras own fault. In line 9, Clara further defends herself by asserting thatit is her parents fault. In line 11, Nurul takes Claras part by agreeing that it must be herparents fault because her parents force her to speak Standard English. Nuruls use of theword force emphasizes that Standard English is an imposed form on the children and notsomething they would pick on their own as a mode of communication. In line 13, Claraseems to contradict herself. In the first part of her utterance she says she was kidding,meaning that she did not mean it was her parents fault. This could be because Clararealizes that complaining about parents to friends is not behavior that generally accepted inAsian culture. Having realized this Clara back-tracks and thus contradicts herself. Howevershe then says that if she speaks Singlish her mother will scold her which confirms that her

parents do indeed prohibit the use of Singlish and encourage only standard English.What comes through in Extract 4 is the role of Singlish and Standard English as in-groupand out-group languages respectively. Singlish is the language of solidarity and friendshipand Clara tries hard to establish herself as Singlish speaker who is only speaking StandardEnglish because of parental pressure. Singlish is also the register which according toVelayutham (2007) is a hybrid cultural form that is uniquely Singaporean. Standard Englishhas status in the language ideology of Singapore and is associated with those in positions ofpower and authority, for instance, teachers, parents, principals, etc. Claras parents seem tohave accepted the Singapore governments policyspeak that Singlish must be discouragedbecause it will interfere with acquisition of Standard English (Wee 2010). However, Clarais caught between the tension of status versus solidarity and must carefully negotiate heridentity within GEMS if she wants to maintain group membership.

In Extract 2, there are four instances (lines 3, 4, 5 and 14), of the Malay girls crossingwith the use of Mandarin and the Chinese girls crossing with the use of Malay. In thisextract, Syafiqah is boasting about the time, approximately 6 months, that she was goingsteady with a boy called Fazli in her school. In lines 3 and 4, Syafiqah and Nurul usethe Chinese word chey which means something like duh or whaaat! This is a typicalresponse when someone cracks a lame joke or delivers a punch-line that the hearer alreadyknows. In line 5, Clara begins her utterance with the same expression. In the same line,Clara crosses into Malay with the exclamation alamak, which roughly translated meansOh my Gosh! All the girls, including Syafiqah herself, are thus expressing shock and



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ridiculing the idea that Syafiqah could go steady with a boy like Fazli. At the same timethey are in awe of the sexually liberated identity Syafiqah is displaying.

In Extract 2, line 14, Nur says, referring to Syafiqah, that in Primary 4 she is guai-guai (Mandarin for goody goody). Nur is thus contradicting the image that Syafiqah isprojecting of herself as a bold young woman who thinks nothing of going steady with boys

as and when it suits her. The contradiction is that according to Nur, in Grade 4 (referredto as Primary 4 in Singapore), Syafiqah was actually a very goody-goody girl. Byusing the Mandarin for goody-goody Nur is crossing over towards Jenny and Clara andincluding them in the group. Clara picks up on the word guai and expressing amazementsays: You! Guai? She is thus challenging the impression that Nur has of Syafiqah inGrade 4.

All these instances of crossing are inclusive attempts to create solidarity between eth-nicities. We do not see Malay and Chinese being used to exclude or racially segregateparticipants which is why there are very few instances of the Malay girls speaking toeach other in fluent Malay and no instances of the Chinese girls speaking to each other in

Mandarin. Where there is a tussle, as in whether or not to include Syafiqah in GEMS, itis a clash of personalities rather than ethnicity. In fact the debate on Syafiqahs character,that is, whether she is goody-goody or not, is related to group membership. The membersof GEMS are rebellious girls and by showing off her relationship with Fazli it is thisrebelliousness that Syafiqah wants to display. This is also part of her unstated desire tobe part of GEMS. In line 14 Nurs challenge to Syafiqahs alleged rebellious nature putsSyafiqahs move in jeopardy as there is no place for goody-goody girls in GEMS.

Performance

According to Rampton (1995; 1999) performance is an integral part of the way cross-ing is displayed. While showing an example of crossing Rampton (1995: 493) writes:Rather than representing the kind of smooth code alternation often found in the speechof fluent bilinguals, the switch in Extract 1 was conspicuously sited in the punchline.What Rampton is emphasizing is the conspicuous display of crossing through punchlines,songs, exaggerated accents, etc. Thus, in most displays of crossing there is an element ofperformance art which is not there in code-switching.

Extract 5 begins with all the girls singing a somewhat naughty Malay song. Though thesong is in Malay the Chinese girls, Jenny and Clara, also join in as they are familiar withthe words. The phenomenon of crossing in popular songs is common among adolescents

who tend to know the words of their favorite songs though the song is in a language overwhich they have no command. However, this particular song is not a pop song; it is a rhymethat children and teenagers sing to tease each other. Though the song is in Malay, except ofthe last line (I love you), which is in standard English, the Chinese girls know the wordsand sing along.

In line 2, Nur says something that is inaudible which prompts Syafiqah to teasingly askher if she would like to marry Farhan. In line 3, Nur changes the tenor of the performanceby suggesting a different pair: Jenny and Farhan, namely, a Chinese girl and a Malay boy.Though no explicit comment is made about the fact that now there is an inter-racial couplein the song, Nur further integrates her Chinese friends into the performance by crossingtowards them in line 7 with Wo ai ni, which is Mandarin for I love you. Syafiqah andNurul also join in by crossing towards Chinese in lines 8 and 9 with the same phrase.



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The use of music and performance in Extract 5 has resonances with the way Ramptons(1999) subject Hanif, uses German and music. Rampton notices that in the use of Germanoutside the classroom there is a self-dramatization and playfulness associated with a ludicor burlesque performance. The person crossing into German is drawing attention to himselfand his self-expression through this performance. In the context of data from Singapore

we find that singing the song together is an expression for group solidarity. The wordsof the song provide opportunities for crossing through which the Malay and Chinesegirls to reach out towards the other. At the same time the girls are creating an imaginarycultural space where there is an inter-ethnic sexual relationship between a Malay boy anda Chinese girl. Ironically, this imaginary relationship has resonances of the Peranakans, acommunity in South East Asia in which the Malays and Chinese intermarried and createda syncretic culture. The Peranakans remain mainly in the history books of Singapore andare no longer a sizable community. The girls, through their performance, are thus evokinga bygone hybrid culture and in keeping with Ramptons (1995: 500) observations, crossingis occurring in moments, activities and relationships in which the constraints of ordinary

social order were relaxed and normal social relations couldnt be taken for granted.

CONCLUSIONS

A unique aspect of this data from Singapore, as compared with crossing in other contexts(Rampton 1995; Lo 1999; Cutler 2003), is that in our data the crosser is nearly alwaysaccepted into the group towards which he/she is crossing. On the other hand in the case ofMike, the adolescent in Cutlers (2003) study, or Chazz in Los (1999) study, the crosseris not always accepted. In many interactions Mike and Chazz are not given insider statusinto the speech community towards which they are drawn. This acceptance of crossing in

the Singapore data could be the result of the fact that GEMS is already established as amultilingual, multiethnic clique that integrates both Malay and Chinese girls. GEMS isa microcosm of the Singapore melting pot where different ethnicities, in this case Malayand Chinese, come together. The performance of the song in Extract 5 is a display of thismulticultural identity through language. The question of the Malay rejecting the Chineseor vice versa does not arise as a movement towards this type of rejection would break upthe clique. Instead, we find that, as in the case of Nurul trying to include Jenny in theperformance of the song, the girls reach out and integrate rather than reject each other.

It is also important to note that the seeming rejection of Syafiqah is more personality-based than ethnicity-based. Since GEMS is multiethnic, the members are not rejecting

Syafiqah because of her ethnicity. This is different from Cutlers (2003) study where theAfrican American adolescents reject Mike because he is European American. GEMSsdecision not to include her despite the fact that she is a very very good friend is probablymore because of Syafiqahs overpowering personality. Since her previous role was as aleader of the Naughty Pranksters it is possible that the members of GEMS think that theircurrent harmonious balance of power will shift with the inclusion of Syafiqah. At thesame time language crossing cannot be seen as a runaway deconstruction of ethnicity,emptying it of all meaning (Rampton 1995: 501). That ethnic boundaries remain fixeddespite crossing is apparent in Syafiqahs comments in Extract 1 about Jennys white skinand small feet.

Another important implication of our data is the role of mother tongues as out-grouplanguages for crossing. In Singapores language policy the mother tongues, in this case



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Malay and Chinese, are actually supposed to be in-group languages. In other words, theyare the symbolic and cultural capital of the Malay and Chinese ethnic groups, respectively.According to Kwan-Terry (2000), in the language ideology of Singapore there are lin-guistic islands in which the ethnicities keep to themselves through their language. Theimplication is that these linguistic islands correspond neatly with language communities

bounded by clearly marked isoglosses. Even code-switching will take place only betweenEnglish and the mother-tongue within one language community. Thus for example theChinese will code-switch with other Chinese in Mandarin and English, a sociolinguisticpractice which reinforces the view of Singapore as a collection of discrete linguistic is-lands. However, what we find is that the participants used mother tongues to bridge theselinguistic islands. Ironically, mother tongues are actively used for crossing and bridgingracial boundaries, a role that is traditionally associated with Standard English, as that is thecommon language between different ethnicities. More importantly, such crossing throwsinto flux the idea that one speaker belongs only in one essentialized ethnic and languagecommunity. The pre-teens in this study create hybrid cultural spaces which are multiracial

by adopting the practice of crossing.Ironically, Standard English does not play this role for the participants in the Singapore

data we collected; it is in fact relegated to parents, teachers, and others in authority who arenot part of the quotidian friendship networks of young people. The in-group language isSinglish in which the participants conduct their interactions. Wee (2005) and Rubdy (2007)have elaborated on attitudes of revulsion and desire among Singaporeans towards Singlish.The participants in this study display an awareness of this tension in their discussion ofthe way Clara speaks English. However, they resolve this tension by assigning separatefunctions to Singlish and Standard English; Singlish is the language of solidarity andStandard English that of status. Our data thus supports Pennycooks (2003) view that

theoretical foci in sociolinguistics need to be more inclusive of other Englishes becausethey provide a rich source of identity for interlocutors. Though Pennycooks view is basedon the processes of globalization, our data have implications for indigenous communitiesresident in Singapore.

NOTE

1. The void deck is an open space on every floor in Singaporean high rise buildings between apartments. Parentsgenerally consider the void deck a slightly unsafe place for young children.

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Hill, Jane H. (1999) Styling locally, styling globally: what does it mean? Journal of Sociolinguistics 3, 54256.Kamwangamalu, Nkonko M. (1992) Multilingualism and social identity in Singapore.Journal of Asian Pacific Commu-

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(Received 23 June 2009.)


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